Lessons of an entrepreneur, educator & executive

To complete my trifecta of posts on communication, this post is all about body language in terms of communication skills. Check out the other posts on speaking and on writing.

Body language is a big key to making sure your communication is received well by the listener(s). I give some hints around facial expression, body movement and body language below.
Facial Expression:
I talk a lot in my training about making sure your face looks pleasant – many people have what is commonly known as “resting b*tch face” (RBF) – if you have this, do the best you can to practice looking pleasant. Use your smartphone to record you answering an interview question or two and notice how your face looks.

The other extremes of RBF are crazy face with too big of a smile or crazy killer face with a maniacal expression. By practicing you can find the right facial expression for interviews, presentations etc. If you know you get nervous and clench your teeth, you can work on relaxing your face.

Most facial expression “issues” are due to nerves and this can be helped by lots of practice and by using the video feature of your phone to make sure you are correcting it.
Body Movements
Body movements means the things you do without necessarily realizing it – such as using your hands a lot or shaking your leg (if sitting). To avoid this being a stumbling block in terms of your communication skills, you need to recognize what you do with your body that might make it appear nervous and/or distracting.

If you have a “tick” something you do while nervous you might not even realize you are doing it. I know some people bite their nails or shake their foot and even I tend to play with my hair when nervous. You can only avoid doing this if you know you do it. By practicing with family and friends and even with a trusted friend of the family it can help you identify
Body Language
This is more the catch all – how do you sit? Do you sit up straight and look focused? Or do you sprawl on the chair and look too relaxed? Do you have your arms crossed – what does this mean to sit with your arms crossed? It means you are defensive and maybe uncomfortable. Do you pace back and forth while giving a talk? Where do you sit and/or stand and how can you convey your body language as being an open communicator instead of someone who is inexperienced and unpracticed.

You do not need to be a Ted-level speaker – you just need to be able to present and speak about things in your realm of expertise. For instance, I could never speak about medical care or neuroscience but ask me about business, careers, college readiness and more and I can go on and on for hours – or whatever timeline is needed for the event. But I can speak about what I know and am passionate about – college, career readiness and entrepreneurship (among other topics such as marketing, finance, economics, global business, advertising, etc etc) --> Learn more on about it via my online course expertise,College and Career Readiness Training,Entrepreneurship Course pages.

I am lucky to do what I love and what I love to do is share my lessons. I was at a local area high school yesterday and as I read through the feedback last night, I was humbled and thankful that I have this opportunity to help students be college and career ready! I will be sharing about that soon and in fact my interns who attended the training will be providing a guest blog post for me sometime soon – so look for that.

Anyway, when I asked the students at the end of our 6 or so hours together, “Do you think I was nervous?” They all said, “No” and I explained to them well yes, I was nervous and I barely slept the night before the event just thinking about all of the ways I wanted to share my information and worrying about all of the mistakes I could make. I expressed to them that no matter who you are or how long you have been speaking or whether you are speaking in front of 10 people, 1000 people or just an interviewer, you will always be nervous but the key is to turn your nervousness into excitement, into inflection and into your speech.

What are my lessons for you?

Channel your nervousness into inflection and passion (as I went on about above).

Before that, though, work on your conversational skills. Get out there and speak to people; put your phone down, stop trying to collect Pokemons and get focused on the art of a conversation.

Be authentically you – but the professional you. Beware speaking too quickly (something all NY’ers tend to do).

You should be able to speak on that which is most important to you and your career. When you are just starting out and you do not know what this is, you learn it rather quickly. It is important to be able to communicate well in different interview and networking settings. Start with your Elevator Value Pitch and then think about other ways and places you can speak.

Do not overlook the power of practice – and a great way to practice is to prepare and present school presentations as well as other options around speaking at your former school or joining Toastmasters.

What do you think about my speaking skills quick tips?

Learn more about skills and applying them to your career with my book on Entrepreneur-ING and run your career like it is your own business. Continue to learn with me via my books, workshops, my YouTube channel, my podcasts and of course my blog with tons of free advice daily. Happy Hunting!

Most people today struggle with writing and business writing is even harder than regular writing.

When you are in school, being verbose is a great thing as most homework and assignments have word counts that can be hard to reach if you do not know how to weave a longer paragraph. This gets turned on its ear when you get your first corporate job as people do not want long diatribes but instead want short, concise, focused writing.

At one of my first real managerial jobs, I remember spending hours crafting the perfect email that would refute some negativity being thrown my project’s way and highlight the best things about the project and why it should be allowed to continue. This was an instance where my style of writing worked best but for many other corporate communications, I struggled with making the words more concise and structured and that did not come naturally to me. I tended always on the side of “flowery” writing.

Now, with the training I give and focus on for my students and clients regarding career readiness and the skills I identified for those students to focus on in my college readiness book, the ideas around “writing” skills are much simpler.

The key today is to be able to write, period. To be able to construct a sentence without a emoji or text speak is something that is rarer and rarer these days even with the influx of “common core” and writing focus for most schools.

Most students are still at a disadvantage when it comes to basic business writing. Here are my tips of quick ways anyone can be a better business writer:

For job searchers and others promoting themselves or their businesses learn how to write a simple business letter – I am considering creating a template and sharing it via my blog – who is interested in a template? Let me know in the comments below.

Outline your communication quickly before writing it down – what points do you want to make and about what?

Once you write it down, read and re-read it multiple times – does it make sense? Is there a better way to write what you have down?

Write as much as possible; write many different things and for many different audiences. Consider writing for a publication and/or your own blog. Practice does make perfect as best as can be.

Writing skills is definitely a skill of the future and you can be ready for the future with me – learn with me via my books, workshops, my YouTube channel, my podcasts and of course my blog with tons of free advice daily. Happy Hunting!

Summer starts quickly and moves quickly. As it is already 4th of July weekend (how did that happen) I thought I would make a post about working on your skills during the summer.

I have written before about learning styles (how to learn to improve your career). You know best on how you learn and because I was inspired by a quote I read recently that said, “Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune – Jim Rohn”, I thought I would help get you on the path to making a fortune…
I create and share lessons every day via my blog and am increasing my use of detailed videos on my YouTube Channel (please subscribe) as well as podcasting and more so I thought I would showcase to you the potential power in my unfiltered lessons.

I am, at heart, an educator. The most important thing I try to teach my students, clients and children is that to grow you must continue to learn. This is a tricky thing to teach to both middle schoolers and advanced professionals. We all have the potential to learn new skills and do better but my middle schoolers are just not interested in “learning” (the quickest explanation is it is just uncool, I guess) and my advanced professionals think they know too much already and do not have a need for new information and for everyone in between those two extremes learning is just something they do under duress, at best.

This is a problem. My advice to everyone is to identify how they learn best and to try to spend an hour or two this holiday weekend reading up on something they want to be able to do better. Everyone has something they want to be able to do better. For me, I want to be better able to forecast my business growth projections so guess what I will be spending some time doing this weekend?

If you learn better be viewing something, use the vast internet to find a training video (there are lots for free) to see what you can expose your brain to regarding some new skill or talent. I already plugged my YouTube Channel up above but here it is again à YouTube Channel.

I guess if you need to learn (which, trust me, you do) you are in the right place – I cover many different ways to learn and have tons of great lessons to share, too. Have a great 4th of July weekend and Happy Hunting!

I have been out there and creating so much content over the last few days and have been thinking a lot about expanding on my already implemented College Readiness training around my books and my content/lessons.
In doing this, I created a podcast all about College Readiness geared towards my target market of students – the middle schoolers and the high schoolers and I focused on the idea of “what you are good at” and this inspired me to make a blog post today to talk about leveraging your skills.

I have discussed skills a lot on my blog from communication skills and presentation skills to skills needed for women and skills needed for the future (read up on those posts here Skills Blog Posts). This post is about leveraging the skills you currently have to be ready for your next step.

Everyone is good at something (as I spoke about in my podcast yesterday) but most people are too modest to promote and leverage what they are good at OR they are too full of self doubt to admit they have a skill at all.
My post today is to inspire you to consider your skills – what comes “easy” to you or what have you worked hard at to be able to do it “easily”. Some people are born with innate skills and that is great but others have to work at things to make it “work”.

List at least 3-5 skills that you have – this is not the skills section of your resume which should be full of actionable skills such as your computer, social media, technical skills – this is instead the things that should be DEMONSTRATED on your resume – so if you are a great project manager, you would have things on your resume demonstrating your prowess as a project manager (such as key accomplishments in successful projects you have run,etc).

What skills should you be demonstrating on your resume? What skills should jump off the page by reading your job descriptions and accomplishments?

Skills for you to print and fill out:

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Now look at your resume; do those skills jump out at you through the page? Underline or highlight the pieces of your resume that map back to these skills – are there skills not showing through on the resume? How can you address that?

What about your LinkedIn profile? Can it be understood by your profile that you have these skills? If not, how can you make these skills “pop” via your descriptive content about who you are and what you bring to the table.
Get comfortable promoting yourself because if you do not do it, no one else will. Get comfortable highlighting the skills you have for this marketplace so that you can always find your next step.

Learn with me every day on my blog and beyond and share your 5 skills on Social Media with the hashtag #my5skills. Oh, and just in case you wanted to know, mine are:

I am and have always been a planner. However, this meant that sometimes I planned for the “wrong” things. I planned on a continuous career in Corporate America to move on up to the C-level for a Fortune 500 company and when I got close to where I needed to be to truly execute on that plan, I realized I was planning for the wrong thing.

This happens to many of my clients and students – the thing we think we want, when we get it, is no longer what we want. Or life happens and changes the trajectory or interest of our plan; such as you never planned on getting married and having kids and now here you are with 3+ kids and a marriage and how did that happen?(Blogger’s Note: I only have two kids so that is not autobiographical at all).

My advice to my students, readers and clients is to plan but to plan flexibly. I recommend drawing upon those choose your own adventure books to help you plan your professional future. Remember choose your own adventure books? If you are a child of the 1980’s like me you definitely read a few or thousands of these books. You could “choose” which way to go with the character such as, “to enter the tunnel go to page 83 to go home instead go to page 30”.

Your professional planning should mimic the “choose your own adventure” book style. You need to have options and ideas for different paths and insights into what really makes you happy in order to make a plan that means anything.

In my books, I talk about reverse planning with choose your own adventure level of thought process. So, start at long term planning first and map out that 10+ year plan and then back up into the 3-5 year and 6month-1year plan. With those plans, think about other futures – alternate realities – you think you want to be a CPA and work in Accounting for 30+ years but after 3months as a junior associate at some firm you are more miserable than you have ever been in your life.

What do you do? Plan B or Plan C or Plan D-Z are things you should consider having thought of with an idea of how to execute on it. So think about how you would change careers, how you could make income from other ways, think about what your budget really needs and how you can meet that number without being suicidal.

A back up plan is needed with a back up to your back up plan. This all ties in to running your career like you are the CEO of a fortune 500 company and you are the company (learn more about this in my first book, Entrepreneur-ING – The Prof’s Guide on using Entrepreneurial Skills to Launch Your Own Business or Be the Boss of Your Career here).

What do you think about planning using the Choose Your Own Adventure Style influence to have backups for your backup plans? Happy Hunting!

I am not one to hold by “statistics” as the saying goes, “Statistics, statistics and damn lies” so instead of referencing statistics about college grads and job opportunities, I am going to use my references instead.

As a professor for the last 13 years, I always ask my students about their work experience. It is part of my introductions that I go over in my first class and then I build off of this information to weave in stories and to ask student participation – such as, “Joe, you said you worked at Bank of America – what do you think they do for this financial thing…” etc etc.

I would say somewhere around year 7 of my teaching career, the work experiences got less and less. Or they got more and more local – so think more Modell’s employees and restaurant type jobs than high finance and the like.When this happened, it became harder and harder to incorporate my students’ real life work experiences to my stories and instead I had to rely on my career experiences to kind of show them the way instead of relying on their peers to do it.

Now, I am at a point where I also ask my classes how many of their peers have real full time jobs after graduation. You remember when we were in college, we all knew students who went before us and we kind of knew where they wound up which was often in NYC at a firm of some sort – I mean EXCEPT for the Communications majors who more often than not wound up stuck in retail. (I am not bagging on Communications majors as a whole and I do think a lot has changed in that major but back in the late 1990’s when I was graduating college, few of those majors found jobs.)

Today and over the last few years the amount of my students who know people who landed full time jobs in Corporate America is less and less. So for a class of 30+ students maybe 6 of them know people who have landed “real” full time jobs.

What do I mean when I say “real” full time jobs? I mean typical entry level corporate America jobs – across any industry. Instead, most of them say their older friends are basically underemployed for their college degree level of education.

I think a lot about why this is. I mean, on the one hand, we had a massive financial crisis from about 2008-2010 which really impacted those years of graduates AND the older employees who tried to weather the storm. Then we have the wave of immense increases in technology (Technology Takes the Jobs) which has led to there being less opportunity for many people, not just my sample size of college students and their peers.

There is also the very real issue of the skills that are just not quite there – more and more of my students over the past few years are in no way prepared for professional life. I do my part across a semester to give them the crash course and it is really why I wrote The Book on Career Readiness so that students can be more prepared to at least give it their all as a professional and not just as a college student who is too green to be hired.

I have put the onus on myself as the Prof to help train my students to be ready for corporate experiences – to know how to act during an interview, to avoid being pegged as a “typical millennial” and all of the negative stereotypes that come with that (always on the phone, not able to communicate etc). Having a book and training programs to go with it now with my company is just the natural next step for me and my business.

I look forward to continuing to teach people how to be ready for their next steps and to prove my sample and extrapolation of data for this borough wrong – join me on my journey as I do this! Happy Hunting!

I spend a lot of time in my workshops for the NYC Ladders for Leaders program trying to “teach” how to build a network. For some, this can be as natural as breathing but for others, it is like trying to walk backwards on the moon without oxygen.

I have found that those who are great at networking are really just making it look easy. It is not an easy thing to do and for most of us, we struggle. Yes, us. Even me. As much as I am social and gregarious (meaning – I love to talk) it is still something that is hard to do.

During my lessons and in my books, I give the game plans on how to network for both seasoned professionals and those just starting out in their careers. Some of my quick pointers are:

Start with who you know – This is the first circle so to speak of networking – your friends, family and family’s friends. Every one of them should know your elevator value statement and what you are interested in regarding careers and/or advice and/or help BUT before they know that, they should also know what you can and will do for them.

I think we forget sometimes that everyone is busy and that helping others, although important, can be hard to remember and focus on when you are also running 90+ miles an hour in your own life. It is very important to be a resource for others in terms of researching things for them or using your social media skills to help advise them on something. By offering help to this layer of your network and using that time to also promote yourself subtly with your value statement and what you are interested in finding out, you can see how much you gain.

Make new connection – You will not know everyone you need to know – ever. There is always more people to connect with and share your brand with either through your first circle of connection or beyond.

As you get out there and attend events for your industry or in your field of interest, you will meet and greet lots of people. Conversely, your first circle might also connect you with people or recommend you reach out to so and so. It is always important to follow up professionally and politely with everyone who is recommended to you. It is also important to not come on too strong. To help with this, you should be well-versed in the different ways to write an introductory email (if you do not know how to do this, I provide templates and more resources in my book on Career Readiness, find out more here.

Quick things to know while building your network - Always ask for advice – never ask for a job. Never come off as desperate and always try to maintain the illusion of knowing what you are doing.

It is important to try to build networks as mutually beneficial learning arrangements – so as an educator if any student just says, “Hi, I want an A.” it is not as powerful as saying, “Hi, I am here to learn from you…” It just structures the relationship on a different level – try to do the same in building your networks. Do not go into the relationship saying, “Hi, I want a job” instead think of “Hey, what can we learn from eachother.” – In these instances, it is not just what you can learn from them but also what they can learn from you. Think of your strengths and skills and see how you can leverage them to almost barter with others for their influence, skills and promotion help.

I am lucky to have been born with an interest in speaking BUT I definitely honed this craft for many many years. When I was giving the speech at my graduation of St John’s University, I was “trained” on how to do that speech even though I had been traveling the country with the Speech and Debate Team and won many trophies but still needed training to be ready to stand in front of 1,000’s of people to give a speech. Ironic but not really. The methods of speaking changes with audience, focus, topic and more.

As someone who “performs” every semester for the past 13 years so approximately 26+ semesters (summer sessions, too) and over 1000’s of students, I can tell you with certainty that speaking gigs or any time you need to communicate with a group of more than 2 that results will vary wildly and that past success is no predictor of current results. For instance, I can give a similar lecture for my course twice and each time it is different because the listeners are different.

And yes, I use the word “performs” about my public speaking and teaching skills. I am doing more than sharing lessons – I need to keep many people focused and interested. In my opinion, the worst thing you can do as a speaker is “bore” your listeners.

Here are my lessons on how to be an engaging speaker:

Mechanics: Smile naturally; make eye contact and keep your voice modulated and loud enough so all can hear. I recently heard a speaker that I could not hear because the tone of voice was so low if could not be heard. You need to ensure you are engaging the first row and the last row of any audience. Match the content with the tone and mechanics (see below for more). Be in charge of your body movements – beware of any cords or wires and if you DO trip just keep going and make a quick joke about the facility trying to kill you or something.

Content: Be enthused about your content as appropriate. Sometimes, we speak about heavy things and in those instances, it is ok to be somber. Work on your delivery and make sure you can speak on something with authority and passion – the mix should be 50/50. No one wants to hear something from someone who seems unsure of what they are saying. You should always be passionate about what you are talking about and it has to be authentic. You cannot fake this even in a group setting. You must be legitimately interested in what you are talking about.

Engaging: Depending on the size of the audience, it is always good to incorporate the audience in the discussion. This, of course, is hard to do in a large setting but smaller than 50 listeners, you can engage and include them and their stories/interests into your talk. This is hard to do and is really only possible if you know your content inside and out. I would suggest starting small with this step and only doing it if you can keep mentally track of the time of your talk and what you want to discuss next, etc.

Brevity: Do not plan for 6 hours when you only have 1. Know your time. Know how long it takes you to cover the content. One of my strongest memories of learning this was as a college student – we all had that professor who spoke well beyond the end of class and it would feel like torture where you could not get up and walk out but you were like how long will I be here? So it is important to know your time and to master it. This only comes with lots of practice. As someone who has mastered the art of both 1 hour and 3 hour AND 6 hour contents speeches as well as the 10 minute, 30 minute (well, you get the idea) it is so important to recognize time as a constraint and that you need to build your content around the time as required/known. I go by a rule of thumb of 30 minutes if I am not given a time but I can expand as needed to more time so I can roll with it. In the beginning of your speaking career, it is not as easy so try to be sure of this time requirement before the event.

Have fun: If nothing else, it is an experience and should be considered both a learning experience as well as the chance to get feedback on the event. Do not shy away from feedback; it is so important as both compliments as well as constructive feedback can be integrated in your next presentations.

With my company, I tend to give many presentations and talks around topics such as blogging, being entrepreneurial, college and career readiness. I find that the most important thing to do to keep an audience’s interest and focus is to be as energetic and passionate as possible but to beware going too far in either direction.What do you think about my quick rules for making presentations "exciting"? Happy Hunting!

In my workshops on Getting the Job, I spend a lot of time talking about building a brand. The lessons I give to the 16-24 year old students who I am teaching are focused for their age group BUT the ideas behind it are applicable to all.

As a small business owner who specializes in helping people "brand" themselves, I have tons of advice and how-to's on using LinkedIn to get noticed. And it works. It is a different level of lessons though for my students through the Ladders for Leaders program but the basic principles apply. Here are some of my best "rules" to use to get noticed on LinkedIn.

1) Use LinkedIn to share industry related content - do not be "spammy" but do share occasional interesting to you news articles about the industry you want to join. When you are ready to do so, you can and should include a brief description about the article and why you are sharing it but be very careful to make sure your sentence structure is great and all spelling and grammar is perfect, too. Try to do this at least once a month. Beware you do not post the same article twice.

2) Your summary should be on point - it should boil down to your Elevator Value Pitch about who you are and what you can do. As I mentioned on Instagram recently, I just updated my LinkedIn Summary and it was a true case of the cobbler's kids having no shoes - I do this for a living and yet my LinkedIn summary was lacking. Now, it reads how I want it to read showcasing my company and what I do and as a bonus, it helped me update my About page for this website, too.

3) Consider inviting people to connect with you in a professional way. If you are on an interview or at a networking event and find yourself really connecting well in person, you can and should ask if it would be acceptable for you to connect with them on LinkedIn. You should have tailored "inmails" ready to be used for people you target by industry or role - my book, The Book on Career Readiness - The Prof's Guide on How to Graduate with a Job Offerhas these templates included in my chapter on LinkedIn.

4) Be professional always on LinkedIn - your profile picture should be of just you in professional attire. Do not post things that would better be kept to Facebook or just off social media entirely.

Look for a post soon about my specific social media strategy for all career professionals to be noticed and hired quickly! Also, if you follow these quick 4 tips for LinkedIn, you will be noticed and contacted - and find yourself having a high conversion rate of clicks to interviews! If you are not sure how best to execute this plan, you can consider hiring me for the $150 LinkedIn Overhaul package in which I provide you with a personalized career plan, one on one coaching and personalized instructions on how YOU should use LinkedIn - click here to learn more.

As usual, I am sharing a lot of lessons and content on my blog, with more to come! On Monday, I posted all about Career Readiness - On Being Professional because I had been inspired by my workshops I have been presenting for the Ladders for Leaders program and wanted to share more content for my career and college readiness readers.

On Tuesday, I wrote all about Growing Your Career by Job Hopping which details strategies for anyone to use to build their career by being willing to make changes and take risks. At times, though, in this economy, this is not about taking risks but just trying to survive. My next posts for the week detailed my new books progression (or lack thereof) in Self Publishing Fun and more about being an entrepreneur and making tough decisions in Being a Solopreneur.

Also, I thought it would be nice to share the top articles for the month of March as we almost are at the end of April.

March was 31 days and in those 31 days, thousands of people visited my site and read my content.

So you find your first job (or your most recent job), does this mean you are “done”? Can you now delete your resumes, stop following me for advice and information on how to be ready for your next step?

NO!

I mean, you could but it gets even harder to prepare for your next step when it is a sudden change and you wind up losing your positions and need to find something new. Instead, it is important to always be managing your career much like my tips and techniques in my first book in the Entrepreneur-ING series Using Entrepreneurial Skills to Launch your Own Business or be the Boss of Your Career. Learn more or order your copy today here Entrepreneur-ING Books.

When I started my career in 1999, it was considered a bad thing to jump around and the rule of thumb was to have at least 1-5 years (or more) at your first job. I have shared before that my first role after my MBA in International Finance was with Merrill Lynch and I only lasted there for 6 months before a dot-com doubled my salary and more and I was out the door. When I left, all of my co-workers told me, “No one leaves mother Merrill – why would you leave this firm?” At the time, this was true as evidenced by one of my 90+ year old co-workers. It was something to just stay with the big company and move around internally job by job (and sometimes with promotions, too).

Now, however, there are actual studies that show that if you stay for more than 3 years with any one company that you are risking a salary jump of upwards of 50% by not moving on. What do you think? Is it worth it to jump around or no?

For me, I think it is important to be entrepreneurial in your career and as such that means not being afraid of the unknown. However, when you have a mortgage and 3 kids, that is easier said than done. The unknown can be one of the most dangerous things.

It is important to maintain job history as best you can and to keep growing your career. For many people, though, this is too risky (like the example above of someone with a mortgage and 3 kids). It is important to keep the resume in perfect shape and be ready for the inevitable and also to maintain networking relationships and build out potential new opportunities for your career to continue to grow. It is also important to always network and keep your relationships current and "well-fed" - more on that here How to Network.

Job hopping is no longer a curse for your resume – it used to be if you had too many short term assignments, you were considered un-hirable or flaky. Now we have this idea of a gig economy where so many people float around from job to job because there are not as many opportunities as there once was. My old “mother Merrill” no longer existed anymore – within a few years of my leaving, most of my department had moved on or been pushed out / laid off.

However you plan out your career, know that the best plan is to be flexible and ready for your next step at all times. Consider hiring me to make sure you have a great brand and resumes on the ready, of course! Happy hunting!

Last night, at one of my workshops on college and career readiness during the Q&A, one of the students asked me, "How do you do what you do? How do you balance your schedule?" It was an awesome question and in relation to the fact that I am currently teaching at CSI, creating an online course for another university, running my own business, preparing and launching seminars/workshops AND have two kids under 10 and whatever else that entails...

It was a great question and prompted me to talk a little bit about meditation. I was excited that some of the students there actually have used mediation to help their scheduling, stress levels and more, too.

Almost one year ago I started to meditate. I never ever meditated before in my life and in fact I can tell you with near certainty that in my whole life I have never been "quiet" enough to meditate inside my head and outside my head.

As an entrepreneur who has been balancing so much, I think my mediation schedule is what helps me clear my mind balance my to do list and overall stay "normal" (or as normal as can be for me).

I have always been a multi-tasker and have spent over a decade as an executive, entrepreneur and educator at the same time in addition to starting a doctorate program and more - however, now that I am doing this business and using my face images and words to share my business and expertise it can get a little bit overwhelming (to say the least).

My routine

I am up at 5 every weekday and I start my day with two meditations - one 15 minute and then one 5 minute. I find this helps me to "set" my mind and prioritize and manage my day. Before bed I do two 15minute meditations and one 5 minute to clear my head and get a good night's sleep.

I used the Mindfulness App and it has been worth every penny of the $2.99 app purchase fee (Note: I am not being "paid" to mention this app; it is just what I use and have gifted to some of my friends and family who have mentioned they might want to meditate).

Results

I was always the person who when taking a test would say "I failed that" and just was always pessimistic by nature but now I have found myself believing more in positive thinking vs the way my brain has always worked before.

I have found it especially interesting as I get closer and closer to a milestone birthday that people can "change" their thought process and that this change can lead to new and exciting opportunities. Without meditation and calming myself with it I do not think I could continue to try to build this business and be so out there without being able to kind of disconnect from it and not stress too much!

Anyone can use meditation - you do not have to be an entrepreneur to see the benefits of clearer focus, less negative thoughts and "calmness". Do you think meditation could help you balance and calm down? Do you meditate? What do you think about positive thoughts vs negative ones? Happy hunting!

There is a way to be ready to bounce back strategically and to be in control of all of the pieces you can be to be ready for your next step.

I am a huge believer in preparing and being ready – and this includes how to set things up in the event of potential career shipwrecks such as being fired, laid off or demoted – or just realizing your career is not going the way you want it to go. This can be just as demoralizing as the other 3 things; if you have an idea or a dream of where you want to be and find that you just cannot get there, it can be disheartening. I have some solutions for you, though to use to combat these potential career disasters.

I have said it before but it bears repeating, continually learn to improve your career; if you have not read that post already, you really should – join the over 6000+ people who read it in March. These are some key ways you can build out your skill set, refocus and transfer skill sets to your next role and by doing this, you can transition to something “bigger” and “better” for your next step!

Stay “hungry” and manage your career like it is your own business – this is THE POST that led to my first book (click here to learn more All About Entrepreneur-ING Books). Hire people to help you be ready for that next step – it does not have to be me but if you are in the tri-state area and transitioning back to the workforce after taking time off or being unemployed OR if you are someone who is focused on being competitive and ahead of the pack, look into what I provide my clients and the value-added of having an author, executive, entrepreneur and educator build your content to make you shine in terms of branding yourself and more – oh and remember, it would all be tax deductible expenses for 2016 tax filings!

If you do not hire me, then hire someone reputable who is invested in helping you get to your next step or use your skills and talents and network to help you prepare your documents for your next step. At a minimum, you must have stellar resumes, cover letters AND LinkedIn profiles to be “ready”. I say resumeS and cover letterS because there is possibilities in changing industries and showcasing different skills and talents for segmented job searches. As part of all of my packages, I provide the career plan, up to 2 resumes 3 cover letters to showcase different expertise for you. The LinkedIn profile really should be focused on one “industry” segment but can be highlighting multiple skill sets and pieces of your personality to help you hit the right people with your awesomeness.

You also need to have a social media presence that is both professional and focused on showcasing your skills and talents and not what you ate last night! I talk a lot about this in my books and my blog and look for future posts about it, too.

Most important of all though is to have built a network as focused and invested in you as you are in them – that means having the give and take and being present and available to “help” as much as you want to be helped.

What do you think of my advice on bouncing back strategically? DO you have these things in order for your career? Happy Hunting!

This is a companion post to my blog on What to Do if You Get Fired. One of the main differences between being fired and laid off is around the "stigma". It is much less; it is an "easier" psychological process wrapping your head around being downsized or laid off versus being "fired".

Even the words imply different things - fire really means pain but laid off is almost like saying you were just let go due to circumstances beyond the employer's control. "Fired" means, for most, that you did something to make yourself lose your job.

Ultimately, thought, the result is the same - you went from being employed and for most of us that means having a purpose and a routine to losing that footing in the world. It is a challenge to "bounce back" and it requires you to be ready for the change. It is important to have certain things "ready" at all times to be one step ahead of potential changes to your employment status.

Many of my clients are people who are currently employed and just being "Entrepreneur-ING" in terms of preparing for their next steps and these folks are the ones who are ready for when/if they have a change in job status. Consider hiring me for your next step.

If you are laid off, there are some positives around what you can walk away with, if you are ready to negotiate. You can negotiate a package for ending employment that usually includes severance payments and could even include career counseling or some other back end training and/or help for your next step.

If you are not given a package deal, consider negotiating to include severance package and/or career counseling services.

When given access to training and/or career counseling help, take advantage of it. Also always have your network and elevator value pitch ready and shared across your networks. Learn more about that with me here blog posts on how to network and crafting your elevator value pitch. You should share with your network both your elevator value pitch and the fact that you are available for a new opportunity.

No matter that you got "laid off" it is more important to move past it as soon as possible and begin planning on taking your next step. It can be tempting to take the decision made by the company too hard. Parting ways with your company can be upsetting and/or depressing. It is important to always try to see silver linings in the situation.

Consider retraining and re-framing your skills much like I advise my clients when they are transitioning back to the workforce - if you have to have a blank space on your resume, try to fill it with training, seminars and volunteer work as I discuss in my blog post on transitioning back to the workforce. Also, you can register for my seminars here, - find out about my seminars here.

For the few and entreprenuer-ING (All About Entrepreneur-ING Books, you can wind up landing even somewhere more senior than where you left. I will be writing a future post on transitioning to a higher position after bad news of firing laying off or downsizing etc.